Jon Bernthal Says Frank Is “Up Against All Of It” In The Punisher

by Erik Amaya

While the release date of Netflix’s upcoming The Punisher is still a mystery, drops of information about the series are starting to appear online. But star Jon Bernthal offered a bucketful when he spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his return to Frank Castle.

“He’s up against all of it,” he told EW. “During this show, nobody is who they appear to be… This season is much darker as it goes, it gets darker and darker and more visceral.” He said the series will see Frank becoming more and more human again before dropping him back into a place of despair. At that point, he returns to old habits and what Bernthal called, “the place where he kind of belongs.”

“I think that’s a place of solitude and of darkness and destruction,” he continued. “It’s going to get into as dark and as brutal a place as you’ve ever seen in the Marvel world, I can promise you that.”

Which would seem the appropriate tone for The Punisher. Well, at least the tone established by his appearance in Daredevil.

As a fan of Punisher: War Zone and Welcome Back, Frank, I definitely appreciate the sardonic humor the character and his world allows. In fact, I tend to enjoy that tone more than the grim-and-gritty feel these days. But I’m also willing to take on the darker approach to Frank, particularly as Bernthal was quite successful as a more realistic and broken version of Frank.

Hopefully The Punisher will reveal as many shades of Frank as it can when it debuts later this year.

Erik Amaya

Host of Tread Perilously and a Film/TV Writer at Comicon.com. A contributing writer at CBR, Fanbase Press, Monkeys Fighting Robots and Rotten Tomatoes. Voice of Puppet Tommy on The Room Responds. A seeker of the Seastone Chair and the owner of a Legion Flight Ring. Sorted into Gryffindor, which came as some surprise.